San Diego GM Suspended, MLB Investigating Padres for Shady Medical Record Keeping

Major League Baseball announced today it has suspended San Diego Padres general manager A.J. Preller for 30 days without pay for his involvement in the July trade of pitcher Drew Pomeranz to the Boston Red Sox. On its face, that's a pretty anodyne description by the league but it would stand to reason it's for Preller's involvement in the Padres setting up a two-tiered medical record keeping system seemingly intended to keep pertinent medical information from opposing teams.

As reported by ESPN's Buster Olney, the Padres started storing medical information on its players in two bins: One for the club that tracked all medical issues and treatment, and another for other clubs to peruse and examine that basically catalogued the bare necessity about injuries. It's that latter record that goes into MLB's central administrative system and is used by teams when they need to check medical records ahead of trades. The Padres, Olney reports, set up their system this way so they could benefit in trades. The logic is simple: The healthier their player seemed, the less leverage a rival team could have in negotiations.

WIth Pomeranz, the Red Sox found out after the trade that the pitcher was undergoing some preventative treatment that hadn't been logged. Though there's no strict rules on it, standard procedure is to log if players even go and use a hot tub or take Advil for something.

Though MLB didn't punish the Padres and Preller for it specifically, the Padres also had to unwind part of a July deal with the Marlins when a pitcher they traded was later found to be injured. The ESPN report says the White Sox also had a grievance with the Padres—the two teams combined for a deal that sent James Shields to Chicago this year.

Writes Olney:

According to sources, the Padres reached midseason with dramatically fewer medical entries on their players. An average number of entries for a given team might be in the range of 60 by the All-Star break. The Padres had fewer than 10, according to a source.

"When you don't have any medical information available on a player," said one evaluator who has been involved in trade discussions in the past, "that's not normal."

This isn't the first time Preller has been suspended by MLB. He was punished for his work overseeing the Rangers international operations and violating rules there.

His tenure with the Padres has been, generally, a mess. He launched a win-now player grab when he got the job last offseason, signing or trading for Craig Kimbrel, Justin Upton, James Shields, and Matt Kemp. That failed miserably and he spent this past offseason and 2016 season trying to undo those deals and rebuild San Diego's farm system. Now he's getting a 30 day paid vacation to think it over.